Friday, January 21, 2011

Comcast Fires Keith Olbermann from MSNBC

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s most successful and controversial personality, whose outspoken prime-time show is one of last remaining counterpoints to Fox News, shocked his viewers with an abrupt goodbye, saying Friday would be his last show. MSNBC said only that they and Olbermann had ended their contract. Sources inside, however, say that Olberman was fired by the network’s new owner, Comcast.

Comcast executives refused to give any statements to the press, but an employee at the cable company’s 24-hour customer support line, which a Bennington Vale Evening Transcript reporter called for an unrelated billing matter, told a different story.

According to the call center operator, who requested that her identify remain undisclosed, “We had some of them Comcast brass in here this afternoon. They was saying things like, ‘Looks like the Countdown just reached T minus zero.’ And, ‘Art intimidates [sic] life. Just like the Republicans took back Congress, we’re going to take back the news. Next month, when we buy NPR, nothing will stand in our way. Hell, we already got PBS and no one’s figured it out yet. And after we get rid of that commie Olbermann, we’re going to take care of the weird little hippie boy who comes on after him.’”

The allusion to a “weird little hippie boy,” our researchers discovered while vetting the source, was most likely a reference to Rachel Maddow, another well-respected progressive journalist on MSNBC whose contractual days are numbered.